The Blackmail Pregnancy (13 page)

She fell asleep in his arms, and he lay there listening to the soft sound of her breathing, grimacing every time his stomach growled with hunger. After a while she turned. He shook his numb arm back into life and, leaving her undisturbed, carefully moved away and reached for his bathrobe.

She was still soundly asleep when he came back some time later. Her hair flared out on the pillow in strands of gold and brown, her cheeks were still slightly flushed from crying, dark shadows like bruises underscored her closed eyes, and she was clutching a stray pillow to her chest like a shield.

Byron sighed and slipped into the bed beside her, but the fingers of dawn were already beginning to write their morning message on the eastern sky before he finally closed his eyes and slept.

Cara was showered and dressed when he came downstairs, already two hours late for work. She passed him a cup of tea with the ghost of a smile. He took the tea and bent down to drop a swift kiss on her lips.

‘You look so amazingly beautiful when you smile.’

She didn’t reply, but her smile increased fractionally.

‘If you’re not doing anything today I thought you might like to help me choose a present for Emma. Can you meet me at the office at lunch—?’ Byron stopped.

Cara had stiffened and the smile had fallen from her mouth. Her eyes had lost their earlier warmth and instead had clouded over, effectively shutting him out once more.

‘Cara, should we talk about this?’

She shook her head and refilled her cup from the pot.

‘I’m busy today,’ she said in a dismissive tone. ‘You choose something; she’s your niece after all.’

He sighed and headed for the cereal bowls, not wishing to press her. He knew there was something significant in the way she was acting whenever Fliss’s baby was mentioned, but just what he had no idea. He wondered if she was thinking of the baby she’d terminated.

His baby. God, it still hurt to think of it. He reached for the milk and then changed his mind, shutting the fridge with a snap.

She looked up at him at that, her eyes still shrouded pools of mystery.

‘I’m late,’ he said. ‘Call me if you change your mind.’

‘I won’t change my mind.’

He hooked up his jacket with one finger and, scooping his car keys with his other hand, said with a tinge of resentment he couldn’t quite remove in time, ‘No, somehow I guessed that.’

She watched him leave, but no words to bring him back came to her trembling mouth in time. She sighed and turned to stare out over the lush gardens and the harbour glistening in the distance.

It was so quiet at the cemetery.

Even the birds seemed to be toning down their song in a respectful hush. Cara took the longer walk to Emma’s grave. She didn’t quite know why she did that, but suspected it was because she didn’t want to come face to face with the words inscribed there. They made it all so final. So permanent and painful.

Walking past the other sites was like walking through a faceless crowd. Cara glanced at the names and wondered what the circumstances of their births and deaths had been. Some were so young—not as young as Emma, but far too young all the same. Others were old, and Cara hoped they’d lived a full life and spread love in their wake.

Her steps slowed down as she approached the tiny bronze cherub guarding her daughter’s resting place. The flowers she’d left previously had died and curled over, as if spent in grief. She sank to her knees and plucked them out of the sponge one by one, laying them to one side as if they too deserved some final respect.

She carefully unwrapped the pink carnations she’d brought, and the white baby’s breath. The faint breeze stirred the tiny buds like air in fragile lungs. It reminded her of Emma’s one and only breath, which had begun and ended her life in the space of seconds. The doctors had been so kind, so gentle as they’d handed Emma to her, still coated with the pale, sticky colour of birth.

They’d left Emma with her for hours. They’d said it would help her grieve properly. But somehow she didn’t think it had. It had made the loss harder to bear—although she knew deep down she would do the same if she had her time over again.

She wrapped the spent flowers in the paper that had protected the fresh ones and got to her feet. She began to retrace her steps, but stopped when a pair of shiny black shoes came into her line of vision. She stood rigid in shock when her eyes finally travelled upwards to the tall figure of Byron standing there. The sun was behind him, shielding his expression from her.

‘Byron…I was…’ She clutched the dead flowers in her hands distractedly. ‘I was…I was just…’

‘Is this where your mother is?’ he asked.

Her eyes skittered away from his.

‘No.’

There was a stretching silence. A silence so heavy Cara was sure he would hear the erratic thud of her heart in her chest.

‘Who is here, Cara?’

She looked at him for a long moment, torn with indecision. Wasn’t it enough that she suffered this loss? What point was there in making him share it with her?

‘No one.’

He made an impatient sound in the back of his throat.

‘So you regularly come here for no other reason than to wander indiscriminately amongst graves?’ His tone was unrestrainedly sarcastic.

She swallowed the lump of dread in her throat without responding. He was stepping past her. Panic tightened her chest. He was three strides away from seeing Emma’s grave. Just three steps…

Cara stood there, desperately trying to frame words in her head to tell him what she realised now he should have been told from the very first.

Now it was too late.

‘Oh, my God,’ Byron stared at the bronze cherub in front of him.

Cara shut her eyes and pictured what he was reading.

It was so quiet she could hear Byron swallow.

He turned to her then, his dark eyes blank with shock.

‘For God’s sake why didn’t you tell me?’ he rasped.

‘I…’

‘I had a right to know, damn it!’

His anger hit her like a slap.

He thrust a hand through his hair distractedly before adding, ‘Why did you let me think you had an abortion?’

Cara looked at the dead flowers still in her hands.

‘I felt I deserved that for what I did.’

‘I’m not following you,’ he said, his frown deepening even further. ‘What did you do?’

She lifted her eyes to his.

‘It’s my fault she died.’

He paused for a moment, trying to get his emotions under some sort of control.

‘What happened?’

‘I was…I was in an accident. My mother and I were going to a…a clinic.’

‘What sort of clinic?’

‘An abortion clinic.’

There was a long silence.

‘Tell me you weren’t going to go through with it,’ he said, in a tone she barely recognised.

She took a deep, steadying breath.

‘I would never have done that. I just went to get my mother off my back. I was already six months gone, but my mother didn’t know that. I was planning to leave her in a few days, but on the way to the appointment a car came from nowhere. I think it ran a red light or something. My mother was severely injured.’

‘And you?’

Cara lifted pain-filled eyes to his.

‘They couldn’t stop the labour in time. She didn’t stand much chance after the impact of the crash. She was too tiny. I held her for hours, but…’ The flowers she was holding slipped to the ground at her feet as she buried her head in her hands.

Byron took a deep breath and pulled her into his arms, his eyes settling on his daughter’s name over the top of Cara’s head.

‘I couldn’t get away,’ she said into his chest. ‘I felt so guilty, and my mother played on that guilt until I practically gave up my life to look after her. If it hadn’t been for Trevor and the business I wouldn’t have survived.’

Byron blinked away the moisture from his own eyes and tried to understand. Why hadn’t she come to him? Had she hated him that much?

‘She had your mouth,’ Cara said brokenly. ‘And…and your chin.’

He let her talk it out, not trusting himself to speak. He felt poleaxed. As if someone had kicked him in the gut so hard he could scarcely breathe without pain.

‘How did you find me?’ Cara asked after a long silence.

‘I came home at lunchtime and I saw you at the bus stop. I decided to follow you. I thought you were coming here to visit your mother, although I couldn’t imagine why you’d want to after all she’d done.’

He wondered if he should tell her about the phone conversation he’d had with Edna. He decided against it. Cara had enough to deal with; she didn’t need any more pain right now.

After a time they made their way out, to where he had parked his car. Neither of them spoke much on the journey home. Byron glanced at Cara several times, but she was looking out of the window with a faraway look in her eyes. He wondered if she was still planning to leave him. He didn’t want to force her to stay if she no longer cared for him, but neither did he want to spend the rest of his life missing her, aching for her presence, her touch, her rare smile.

He waited until they were home before he broached the subject.

‘Cara?’

‘Yes?’

He studied her uptilted face for a long moment.

‘Where do we go from here?’ he asked.

‘Go?’

‘Our relationship,’ he said. ‘Do we have a future together or is it over?’

He could see the answer in her eyes and wished he could stop her from saying it, but he could see it was already too late.

‘It’s over, Byron.’

‘Why?’ He was proud of the way his tone was unaffected by the emotion he was feeling inside.

‘Because we have no future, only a past.’

‘We can make a future. Surely that’s possible?’

‘No.’ She turned away, unable to look him in the eyes. ‘I’m afraid that isn’t possible.’

‘Why, for God’s sake?’ Desperation was creeping back into his tone and he tried to bank it down. ‘Why can’t we give it a try?’

She looked at him with a cold blankness in her eyes that totally unnerved him.

‘I can’t give you what you want.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You want children, don’t you?’

‘Eventually. But we don’t have to be in any hurry. We can wait until you’re ready and—’

‘I’ll never be ready.’

‘Cara, of course you will be—once you get over Emma. We both need time to heal.’

‘You don’t understand.’ A tiny crack began to appear in her composure.

‘Understand what?’ he asked. ‘I said we’ll give it some time. Take all the time you need.’

‘Byron you’re not listening to me.’

He stopped, somehow sensing she had something serious to say. If only he’d known how serious he might have better prepared himself.

‘I was also injured in the accident,’ she said, in a flat, emotionless tone. ‘I can no longer have children.’

H
E DIDN’T
trust himself to speak. He couldn’t speak. Emotion had clogged his throat as he recalled the way he’d forced her back into his life. He cringed at the pain he’d caused her, insisting on things he had no right insisting on, when all the time she had been trying to heal herself. He’d come rampaging through and reopened all her wounds.

‘I realise this must be a shock to you,’ she was saying. ‘I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t do that without telling you about…about Emma.’

Her slight hesitation over their daughter’s name tightened his chest another notch.

‘You’d end up hating me more than you do now,’ she continued. ‘You deserve better than that. You’d make a great father. Don’t throw yourself away on me, because even if I wanted to I can’t give you what you want.’

‘We can adopt.’ He clutched at the nearest straw.

‘No. You can still have your own children. Why shouldn’t you do so?’

He didn’t have an answer for that. He needed some space to think. Everything that had happened today had completely thrown him. He wasn’t used to being so out of control.

‘Why did you agree to live with me?’ he asked when his thoughts had reshuffled a bit more. ‘If you knew all the time you couldn’t have another child, why let me railroad you into a relationship with me?’

She found it hard to meet his questioning gaze.

‘I felt guilty about the way I’d neglected the business. I didn’t want Trevor to lose everything he’d invested just because I’d been preoccupied and out of focus. Besides,’ she added with a hint of wryness, ‘I thought you’d soon get tired of me when I failed to produce the goods.’

‘And the Pill?’ His eyes had narrowed and his frown deepened. ‘Why bother taking it if you don’t really need it?’

‘I need it to regulate my cycle. Ever since…Emma…’ Her stumble over their daughter’s name clawed at him again. ‘It’s got out of whack; my GP thought a low-dose pill would help.’

He met her eyes across the short distance between them, his expression determined.

‘I want us to get remarried.’

It took her a full thirty seconds to register his words.

‘What?’

He closed the distance and took both her hands in his.

‘I want us to get married right away and start again,’ he stated.

‘Are you completely mad?’ She gaped at him. ‘I can’t have children! Didn’t you hear what I said? I can’t give you what you want!’

‘I want children, but I want you more.’

She opened and closed her mouth, trying to find the words to answer him but nothing came out.

‘There are hundreds of abandoned children in the world we can adopt or sponsor,’ he added before she could respond. ‘Children are children, no matter who they belong to biologically. I can see that now, after the way you were with my nieces and nephews. You’re a born mother; no child you come into contact with could resist you. Damn it,
I
can’t resist you—and I’m an adult, although I haven’t been acting like one lately. Can you forgive me?’

‘I don’t know what to say…’ She was having trouble keeping up with him. Her emotions were rocketing around her chest as if they threatened to break through the barrier of her ribcage.

‘I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Cara,’ he said. ‘Surely by now you realise that?’

‘You…’ She swallowed the lump in her throat and raised her eyes to his. ‘You…care for me?’

‘I more than care for you. I’ve never stopped loving you. The day you walked out of my life I wanted to die. I threw myself into my work to compensate, but even after seven years it’s just not enough. I want you to fill the emptiness of my life. Only you.’

‘I still don’t know what to say.’ She felt his arms gather her to him, felt herself melt into the solid warmth of his frame.

‘What you’re supposed to say is you feel exactly the same way,’ he said with a soft smile.

‘I do, I love you, but—’

‘But?’

She threw him a troubled glance.

‘I want to be with you, but I feel as if in time you’ll come to resent me for not being able to be the sort of partner you need.’

‘I need you, Cara. I don’t want anything else.’

She so wanted to believe him, but how could she be sure?

He lowered his mouth to hers and her doubts were temporarily suspended by the magic of his touch, his very fingers drawing from her the lurking fears with determined strokes that made her flesh sing with delight. But even after the taste of paradise her worries crept back, like seeping damp cracks in the wall of security she so needed around herself…

Byron smiled at her across the table over breakfast the next morning.

‘My folks want to know when you’re going to make an honest man out of me.’

Cara could feel herself stiffening in reaction.

‘You’ve told your parents about us?’

‘Of course I have.’ He pushed his cereal bowl aside. ‘I rang them first thing this morning. They were delighted with our news.’

She pushed her own breakfast away untouched.

‘Why do your family have to know about everything you do?’ she asked.

She heard the tinny clatter of his spoon as he placed it inside his bowl.

‘They’re my family—that’s what families are for: to share one’s life with,’ he said.

‘Couldn’t we have had just a few days to ourselves before they were in on the secret?’

‘Secret?’ He stared at her. ‘What secret?’

She shifted agitatedly in her seat.

‘I wanted to get used to the idea of us being together again before we announced it to all and sundry.’

‘My family are hardly all and sundry.’

‘Your family are all-consuming. Even Fliss says so.’

‘Yeah, well, she would, since she’s had her head screwed by Freud and Jung
et al.
For God’s sake, Cara, we’re together again! What the hell does it matter who knows about it?’

‘Have you told Megan?’

His gaze shifted away from hers.

‘I didn’t think it necessary to do so.’

‘Why ever not?’

He got to his feet and his sudden movement sent a splash of untouched coffee over the side of his mug.

‘I’m going to work, and when I return I want the Cara I had in my arms last night back here. Got that?’

She threw him a defiant glare.

‘Why haven’t you told Megan about us?’

He shoved his chair in, sending another shockwave through his coffee.

‘I’ve told you before—Megan has nothing to do with us.’

‘She’s pregnant, you know,’ she said, watching his face like a hawk.

‘That’s got absolutely nothing to do with me.’

‘Hasn’t it?’

‘How can you ask that?’ He stared at her incredulously.

She gave an indifferent shrug.

‘I don’t know. She might come in useful one day. You could engage her services as a surrogate mother. At least that way you’d be able to add to the Rockcliffe gene pool.’

‘I refuse to partake in such a useless conversation,’ he said, reaching for his keys. ‘You seem determined to bring down the bridge we’ve built as if you don’t want to be happy. What is it with you? You criticise my family, as if they’re intent on destroying you, when all they want is for you to be happy.’

‘They’re your family, not mine.’

‘No, Cara, they’re
our
family. They did their best to make that clear to you seven years ago, but you rejected them out of hand. They loved you and welcomed you with open arms, but you kept pushing them away. Even now you’re pushing them away.’

‘I’m not pushing them away. I just feel claustrophobic around them.’

‘Only because you can’t keep your guard up all the time.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ she flashed back at him defensively.

‘You don’t like crowds because you can’t keep your tight façade under control. People slip under the barricade and you feel threatened in case they see the real Cara for who she really is.’

‘I thought it was just your sister with the psychologist’s degree?’ she tossed at him with heavy sarcasm.

‘I’m not going to let you get away with it you know,’ he said. ‘I love you too much to stand by and watch you sabotage your life again. I realise my family are a touch overpowering, especially to someone like you who has missed out on so much of what makes a family a family.’

‘I don’t want your pity.’

‘I’m not giving it,’ he said. ‘I’m simply stating a fact—we had completely different childhoods, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a happy and satisfying life together.’

Cara wanted to believe him, but there was a part of her that kept holding something back just in case.

‘Look, sweetheart.’ He gave a deep sigh of resignation. ‘Maybe you’re right; I do allow my family too much space in our lives. Perhaps I shouldn’t have insisted on you coming to Melbourne with me.’

Hearing him finally acknowledge it somehow seemed to make his family less of a threat. She knew deep down the problem was really with her. Her childhood experiences had encroached on their relationship just as much if not more than his large and boisterous family had ever done. The truth was she was jealous. Jealous of the bounty of love his family shared between them—each one looking out for the other, taking an interest, laughing together, crying together.

They represented what she’d always dreamed of having, but instead of joining in she’d made herself feel excluded, deliberately sabotaging his relatives’ attempts to draw her into the shelter of their inner warmth. Ironic, really, she thought, that it had taken until now to actually see it.

‘We don’t have to see them unless you want to,’ he said across her thoughts. ‘And they don’t need to be present at our remarriage. We’ll keep that simple and private too.’

‘I’d like them to be there,’ she said with a faint smile. ‘Especially Great-Aunt Milly.’

‘Well, then.’ Byron laughed. ‘I’d better order an extra case of champagne just for her.’

She couldn’t stop the spread of her smile over her face as she looked up at him.

‘Aren’t you going to be late for work?’ she asked.

He gave his watch a cursory glance before hauling her into his arms.

‘Work can wait,’ he said huskily. ‘I’ve got something much more interesting to do.’

Cara watched Byron drive off to work an hour later, her emotions in a state of ambivalence. She wanted to be confident of their future together, but no matter how hard she tried to envisage it the picture in her mind became blurred when she thought of their long-term happiness. At the very core of Byron’s being was the desire to have his own child, just as his brothers and sister had done. He wanted a replica of his own childhood family—something she was unable to give him.

She loved him, but was it enough? Would her love be enough to carry them through the long, lonely years of middle age and retirement? What if he decided at the last minute he’d had enough of her and wanted to move on? It was so much easier for men; there was no biological clock ticking away in the background like an atomic bomb waiting for the most devastating moment to go off. Byron could still father a child at any age while she had no further chance. That had been ripped away from her, along with the tiny baby she’d so wanted to bring into the world.

Trevor called her during the emptiness of the afternoon.

‘I can’t believe what a prima donna she is!’ he railed as he described his first morning with Megan at the helm. ‘She’s been asking for all the business receipts. I don’t know where they are, for God’s sake.’

Cara couldn’t help a twinge of guilt at the frustration in his tone. She couldn’t let him take the total blame for the near collapse of the business.

‘Let her do what she has to do, Trevor,’ she said. ‘I’m sure things will start to look up once all the bookwork is sorted out. I’m sorry I left you with it. I should have helped but—’

‘She’s a bitch on legs,’ Trevor said. ‘And she got even worse once her boyfriend arrived.’

Cara’s spine instantly tightened.

‘Her boyfriend?’

‘Haven’t you met him?’

‘I’m…I’m not sure,’ she said uncertainly.

‘Married guy, high-profile, all hush-hush.’

‘Should I know him?’

‘Well, sweetie, you did his house for him.’

Her stomach gave a sickening lurch.

‘Not…not…’ She just couldn’t voice his name.

‘Dylan McMillanus.’ Trevor interrupted the torture of her mindset. ‘You know—that guy who’s in that soap opera on Channel Eleven. He’s going to be a daddy too, but you didn’t hear it from me. My lips are sealed like an express envelope.’

Cara felt faint as relief flooded her veins like a hypnotic drug.

‘Are you sure?’

‘I heard them talking about it,’ he said. ‘Well, to tell you the truth half the street would’ve heard if I hadn’t shut the office door in time. He wasn’t too happy about the kid—bad publicity, you know, having it off with someone when there’s a wife already installed at home.’

‘A wife and two kids, if I remember,’ Cara said, recalling the actor’s beautiful children—a boy and a girl not much older than Byron’s nieces Katie and Kirstie.

‘Men can be such bastards,’ Trevor said disparagingly.

‘He didn’t do it alone,’ she pointed out. ‘Perhaps Megan wanted a child?’

‘Well, according to the little domestic I overheard that’s all she’s going to end up with. Dylan McMillanus is not the sort of guy to break up a happy home for the sake of a bit of fun on the side. He offered her a pay-out to keep her mouth shut.’ He named a sum that raised Cara’s brows.

The conversation shifted to other topics, to Cara’s relief. Once she’d hung up the phone, however, the irony of it all hit her with a stomach-clenching jolt. Megan was going to have a child, but no husband, and she, Cara, was going to have a husband and no child. No wonder Megan had been on Byron’s tail! She must have known Dylan McMillanus would let her down in the end and in her desperation tried to hook Byron instead, but somehow he’d resisted.

A warm glow of feeling rushed through her at the thought of his determination to repair their relationship—even though he was the one making the bigger sacrifice. How she loved him! And how she had misjudged him!